Bryce Dallas Howard has looked stunning while out on the promo tour for Argylle, the latest Matthew Vaughn spy movie she stars in with Claudia Schiffer’s cat. My favorite ensembles have been the Rowen Rose argyle sweater-skirt set and Altuzarra marigold dress matching skirt and top. She’s a bombshell in these looks, no? Which makes it all the more infuriating that Hollywood has cast her as “the big girl,” with “big” meaning “not sample size.” Bryce has always been candid about how she has to source her red carpet looks herself, but she’s reached the point where she’s sick of perennially discussing her size. I don’t blame her. So Bryce has declared that she’s “retired” talking about her body:
“I’ve retired talking about my body,” the Argylle star tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “My focus is on what my body is doing, what my body is capable of.”
The reflective star, who broke out 20 years ago with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and in 2022 wrapped a decade of Jurassic World films opposite Chris Pratt, recalls years spent gently pushing back when asked to lose weight for roles. Now, she’s begun to invite direct conversations before signing on.
“What I found was best is to just be in communication with folks early in the hiring process,” she says. “What I would say is that, ‘If you want to cast me, awesome. But if you think you want to cast me, but 20 pounds less me or 40 pounds less me, that’s actually another actor. That’s not me, and I’m not going to shame you in this moment about this. We need to have a real conversation here because if you’re hiring me, you’re hiring me.’”
That included her latest film, Argylle (now in theaters). Ahead of filming director Matthew Vaughn’s new spy thriller, “I had that conversation with Matthew. And Matthew, was like, ‘Yeah, I’m hiring you.’” Playing an introverted spy novelist who finds herself fighting for her life when thrust into real espionage, “I was even stronger because of it,” she adds. “I was able to do more because of it.”
Howard has always found it uncomfortable to be the face of these conversations. “Who I am is someone who fluctuates,” she says. “I took some time and it took some work and it took some counsel to really realize that dieting is the enemy, for me at least.”
Today, the mom of two focuses on strength — “training my body to accomplish X, Y or Z for whatever given circumstances I need to bring to life for a movie.”
She’s also steadily expanding her work behind the camera, directing episodes of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and the upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew after years spent studying the process on film sets.
“I love directing, and it’s as important to me as acting,” she says. “It’s been really wonderful to lean more into gaining experience, and I love to work.”
Bryce is awfully classy and generous to the small-minded producers and filmmakers she references, way more than they deserve. Remember when she said (speaking of the Jurassic World producers) that she was “asked to not use my natural body in cinema,” carefully phrasing her words in a delicate way I’m sure the producers didn’t show to her? I can understand how she’d want to avoid that experience again, by having these frank conversations at the very beginning. But it’s still so demeaning. “Are you really sure you want to hire me? Remember, I’m Hollywood fat!” And for the record, I would kill for her figure. Le sigh. I’m so glad to hear she’s directing and really enjoying that side of the camera. I hope she continues to do both, and be the 21st century, redheaded Ida Lupino.
Photos credit: Roger Wong/INSTARimages, Jason Howard/BauerGriffin/INSTARimages, Ulices Ramales/Backgrid
I normally don’t like stripes but she looks so good in that dress in the top pic. She’s been killing the looks this press tour, not only are the outfits great, but you can tell she’s enjoying herself and feeling good about herself. Confidence and self love always enhances one’s beauty. Go Bryce! Also, I’m going to see this movie tonight – can’t wait!
I saw it this weekend- it’s two hours of pure stupid fun with every actor you love. Enjoy!
They did her so wrong in the 2nd Jurassic movie. Big plaid shirts to cover her up.
It was so obvious.
She’s gorgeous and seems lovely. The way she looks on this promo is noticeably slimmer than she has been in the recent past, since she had children. She talked about how she had some postpartum issues after the births and I’m sure all of that affected her weight, although she was always fit looking, just not “Hollywood” skinny. You can see in the way she is dressing and how her face looks that she lost some weight, and that seems to have given her a bit more confidence to wear more form fitting clothes. She looked amazing before and amazing now and I just hope she’s happy. She is one nepo baby that really never relied on her lineage to get ahead and I so appreciate that about her.
She looks radiant! But I think it’s important to honor what she’s talking about by continuing the honesty in conversations about this- she was definitely not always “fit looking” and that’s okay. She was chubby but that had no bearing on her talent, nor should it have. I think it does her a disservice to act like she looked fitter than she did because the point (to me) is that she was okay with how she looked.
Agreed, she has always been lovely, and she has slimmed down dramatically, so looking at current pics with her past words is misleading.
Sorry, but she absolutely has relied on her connections. She is not a good actress, and she is not a good director. Watch the first Mandalorian episode she directed (season 1, ep2), it was God awful. How did she get that gig? Was it really “merit” or was it because her father director the Star Wars “Solo” movie? And then after that horrible debut, they let her direct again to redeem herself. Who else would have been given these chances?
I’ve always thought she is beautiful, with a gorgeous womanly figure. I love that she is being true to herself. I wish I’d had that confidence when I was young.
They wrote an entire episode of Black Mirror about how unglamorous she is. Her. That woman posing in stylish looks above. Hollywood is so toxic. (The episode is brilliant, though. Not a slam at Black Mirror.)
Really??? Disgusting, appalling, I’m speechless!!
She always looked gorgeous ❤️
If you haven’t seen it, it wasn’t making fun of her. She was cast as a frumpy, loserish type character, but she absolutely *owned* it and I’m sure it was cathartic in the face of all the crap she’s taken for not being model perfect (though I don’t get it. Even in her closer to size 8 days, she was much more glamorous than the average person).
She’s saying this now because she’s being asked about ozempic. She has clearly lost a lot of weight. I’m not saying she needed to but that it’s obvious. I think it’s kind of nuts that this whole post is saying how great she looks now ie slim, while pretending to be body positive.
Few celebrities are truly body-positive. Given the chance (i.e., Weygovy), they will choose thin every time. I mean, I think most people would, except don’t try to garner good will and publicity for being “body positive” when you really aren’t. It’s why Valerie Bertinelli types bother me, she made money shilling for weight loss products (that didn’t work long term) and now wants people to know how much she accepts her body. Until she gets her own weygovy prescription, that is.
THIS ALL DAY.
I really like Bryce Dallas Howard, and I love that she’s fighting the good fight about how women’s worth shouldn’t be tied to their weight. At the same time, she comes from a position of real privilege, and has had the option to say no when someone’s asked her to lose weight for a role. There are a lot of young women trying to break into Hollywood who don’t have that luxury. You get a paying job, but only if you lose 20 lbs? There aren’t going to be too many struggling actresses who say no. And certainly not many who can stand up for themselves, like the daughter of Ron Howard, and say, “Nope, not gonna lose weight for you.”
She’s so beautiful. She looks great in all those looks, agreed. Wouldn’t be surprised if she looks underweight if you see her in person. “Big” in HW is like Jennifer Lawrence around when she got her Oscar and Bryce, and then when people see them in real life, they’re like, “They’re skinny ladies.”
Bryce is so beautiful. She was before the cheek implants as well. I don’t think I’ve ever met or come across an underattractive redheaded person, whatever their gender.
Bryce Dallas Howard really IS an extremely talented actress. I admit I kind of side-eyed her at first (i was like “Oh look another nepotism actress” 🙄) until I saw her episode of Black Mirror, in which she was AMAZING. The fact is there are plenty of nepotism performers who are massively talented although that is only a small part of why they’ve achieved success.
ANYWAY, I do NOT love the shade of green in her dress (the pics from the link) but the marigold dress is BREATHTAKING. And props to anyone who can wear that nearly impossible-to-wear color. I also like her long striped sweater dress above